It’s that time of year again for those beloved ‘Best Of‘ posts filled with hot takes and questionable opinions!

But wait, the year isn’t over yet! You monster, how could you do a top ten list in the middle of November? Well, for all intents and purposes everything from Marvel Legends has been released for the year. Sure the Sandman Spider-Man wave will likely hit in late December, but similar to the Absorbing Man wave from this year it counts as a January release. So let’s go ahead and get into what the best of the best was this year:

10. Eel – Why Eel? Sure he’s pretty much 100% reuse, but dammit he’s so obscure and well done. I don’t think I ever got around to reviewing him, however, he just pops on the shelf. I also find it humorous that they found Eel fitting to get alternate fisted hands but not Electro.

9. Scarlet Witch (MCU) – Despite my disappointment in the Civil War movie, this is a very well done figure. Possibly one of Hasbro’s best movie efforts so far. If only her deceased brother wasn’t lost in the abyss of Disney/Fox movie rights pissing contests.

8. Space Venom – Oddly, this year we’ve gotten a ton of legitimately great Marvel Legends, but the build-a-figures have had about a 50/50 split of awesome to ho-hum. Space Venom is on the great side of that split obviously. With a whole mess of Guardians of the Galaxy figures hitting next year, it was the perfect opportunity to slip him into the line.

7. Spider-Gwen – Such a striking costume! Thankfully Hasbro fast-tracked this one to production so that Gwen could join our ever expanding Spiderverse.

6. Venom – The Eddie Brock version of Venom was in dire need of an update. Even though I’m getting a bit tired of the Hyperion body, it works really well with this character. I appreciate that they also included both an open with tongue out and closed mouth head. I like them both but I was shocked at how split the fandom is on which look they prefer more.

5. Nico Minoru – Nico’s outfit just brings me back to high school and all the crushes I had on goth girls. She’s also another awesome figure, and the standout of the Dr. Strange Dormammu build-a-figure wave.

4. Miles Morales/Ultimate Peter Parker – While having these two characters is great, the new ‘teenage‘ body is the real highlight of these two figures. Hasbro went and developed the quintessential teen or smaller-framed body just like they did with Pizza-Spidey a few years back. While I could possibly drop these two a little lower on the list as punishment for not including some kind of food accessory, the alternate hands and unmasked heads make up for it a bit.

3. Kitty Pryde – Kitty is one of the cleanest deco’d Marvel Legends females to date. She’s also Katherine Anne Kitty Fucking Pryde! And includes Lockheed! Sure my X-Men bias may be obvious with these top three, but Kitty takes the spot I would have thought Rogue would end up until I actually had the set in hand. Nothing against Rogue, she’s still great, but Kitty took my breath away. Thankfully I had friends close to perform CPR.

2. Wolverine – There was a time not too long ago where we’d collectively groan at a Wolverine release. Oh my how things have changed! I’m calling it now, this is the best Wolverine in Marvel Legends. The scale, stiff claws, paint, and even the articulation. Hasbro got it all right, finally! On top of that, they did it in the brown suit. Tremendous!

1. Juggernaut – I’d probably consider Wolverine a better figure overall, however, I’ve been waiting so long for a great Marvel Legends Juggernaut. I love Juggernaut. He’s my jam and when I heard that he was going to be the build-a-figure last year I was ecstatic! His proportions are perfect, meaning I could finally part (or put in storage, never to be seen again) with my old Toy Biz ML6 version that had the gigantic gorilla arms. Juggernaut was the ideal build-a-figure to bring X-Men back into Marvel Legends.

I could also give honorable mentions to dozens of figures this year as well. The X-Men wave in its entirety was just about perfect. We also got so many updates that put the old Toy Biz figures to shame like Captain Britain, Deadpool, and Rogue. There were also many firsts for Marvel Legends such as Enchantress, Dreadknight, Red Guardian, and Superior Beetle.

All in all, it’s been a great (and expensive) year for Marvel Legends. It’s also exciting because it doesn’t appear that this pace is slowing down at all for 2017. Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, and Spider-Man, can’t wait!

I definitely waffled back and forth on Taskmaster and Deadpool making it onto the list.

Abomination is an interesting one! I think he’s great but him and Enchantress ended up getting forgotten about when we got two releases within the same couple months. That said I really like the build-a-figure’s deco more than the SDCC set’s version.